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No complaints from me this time. 21.5 was a perfect adaptation of Motoko's depressing and disturbing story. I'm really glad it made it into the anime. I loved all the throwbacks to previous episodes.

Quote:

Originally Posted by PzIVf3

Spoiler for Shike 21.5:

Good grace this episode is so disturbing and depress yet there are still no answer if there Shiki survivors in the ending. I really enjoy this series its gives me chill and exciting suspense well its sad its finally over.

Only Seishin and Sunako survived. All the other shiki have been killed.

By the way, the manga is entirely scanlated now, so it's time to read it if you haven't done so already. The last chapter features a short epilogue.

Spoiler for Manga - A little treat for Seishin fans (Bun :p ):

I'd like to add it's unclear whether Seishin became a werewolf in the manga. I think he actually became a shiki (a pretty badass one... he killed epic beard guy in a very gruesome way), which is less of an ass pull than what happend to him in the anime.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Blaat

I thought we would get an episode focused on the little brother? I mean we haven't seen how he survived after entering the shiki sleeping place. Or am I misremembering things, it has, after all, been a year (?!) since the series started.

It wasn't shown it was heavily implied he was rescued by Natsuno. I think Natsuno even confirmed it during his dialogue with Tatsumi, but I'm not sure.

I'd like to add it's unclear whether Seishin became a werewolf in the manga. I think he actually became a shiki (a pretty badass one... he killed epic beard guy in a very gruesome way), which is less of an ass pull than what happend to him in the anime.

Actually...

Spoiler for response:

given the time between Seishin's supposed 'death' and rising, he can't be anything but a werewolf.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kanon

It wasn't shown it was heavily implied he was rescued by Natsuno. I think Natsuno even confirmed it during his dialogue with Tatsumi, but I'm not sure.

I'd like to add it's unclear whether Seishin became a werewolf in the manga. I think he actually became a shiki (a pretty badass one... he killed epic beard guy in a very gruesome way), which is less of an ass pull than what happend to him in the anime.

Spoiler for From what I've heard about the novels:

From what I've heard, in the original novel (I can say this now that the series is over right?) Seishin became a werewolf so that's probably what happened in the manga as well (although I do need to find the last few chapters).
And I was pretty sure that Natsuno rescued Akira (wasn't that his name), especially since he died in the novels and Natsuno wasn't a werewolf in those.

From what I've heard, in the original novel (I can say this now that the series is over right?)

Novel and manga talk is ok as long as it deals with what was shown in the anime so talk of Seishin's rising is fine

21.5 was again excuted wonderfully. I like that both OAD's were told thru other ppl's eyes. Damn Moto. The brain part almost made me jump, I was like, oh gawd! Didnt expect it. She kinda reminded me of Nao in that she was left with nothing but unlike Nao wasnt a Shiki. Seriously I could watch several more of these OAD's but the manga will do.

given the time between Seishin's supposed 'death' and rising, he can't be anything but a werewolf.

Ah, yes, I had forgotten werewolves "rose" faster. Seishin is really the only true winner of this anime. The village he hated so much burnt down, freeing him at last; he became an immortal superhuman; and last but not least, he got himself a cute legal loli. Lucky bastard.

Finished it a few hours ago (and now I see some mentions of extra episodes that I haven't watched, so maybe finished isn't quite the right word) and want to get one thing off my chest:

Die, Seishin, you spineless, cowardly traitor! Die! And take Sunako with you to hell, will ya?

Ah, that felt nice. I don't know if it was intentional or not but I saw Seishin as the embodiment of pseudo-intellectual who always tries to see the situation through every viewpoint, never takes quick decisions and uses a lot of lofty phrases he doesn't really understand. Which would have been harmless enough, if he weren't playing with people's lives.

I loved the show's dark atmosphere and the OST but I am not too crazy about the plot. There is always a big problem with those town and villages where people die every day and no one finds it all that odd. The show tried really hard to draw a parallel between shiki and humans but didn't do it too well. It really bothers me when part of the fandom of such shows (cough, Buffy, cough) defends the supernatural killers with phrases like "well, humans can be complete monsters too". Yes, they can but generally the vast majority of humans do not murder for pleasure. If only a small percentage of shiki, vampires, werewolves or whatever supernatural creatures are in a given show bother to fight their nature, why should we blame the humans who fight back and kill them? If you have met ten shiki so far and all of them were killers, would you be inclined to believe the eleventh one when he claims he is actually a nice guy?

Anyway. grumbling aside, I haven't watched an anime series so quickly (in just a few days) since forever, so I enjoyed it overall. I am just sick of woobie vampires, so that's mostly my problem, not an objective problem of the show. I really liked Natsuno, Ritsuko and Toshio (only later on, he was a bit of a moron early on). Megumi and Tatsumi were interesting villains. Sunako...I am so tired of scary little girls, to be honest.

__________________

'The world we live in is always in darkness.'
'Yes, and that is why we seek light.'

Yes, they can but generally the vast majority of humans do not murder for pleasure. If only a small percentage of shiki, vampires, werewolves or whatever supernatural creatures are in a given show bother to fight their nature, why should we blame the humans who fight back and kill them? If you have met ten shiki so far and all of them were killers, would you be inclined to believe the eleventh one when he claims he is actually a nice guy?

Except that the humans not only were killing Shikis,they started going after people that were simply bitten (and being bitten once isn't deadly,they could have recovered) or supposed "traitors" when they had no proof and sometimes were just innocent people.

The humans were also in denial about the shikis still being the same people they were when they were alive.
It's one thing to accept the fact that "hey,I'm going to have to kill this person I'm very fond of to survive,so be it", and another to try and confort yourself by saying "this isn't the person I once knew,so it's ok to kill that person" because the latter is a complete lie,the shikis still had memories and emotions so they still were very much the same person.

I thought we would get an episode focused on the little brother? I mean we haven't seen how he survived after entering the shiki sleeping place. Or am I misremembering things, it has, after all, been a year (?!) since the series started.

I've been wondering the same thing. Personally, I don't even think it's implied that Natsuno saved him unless you read a lot between the lines - in the anime anyway. It does make the most sense, but my sincere hope is that they show it in more detail in the final extra episode.

It's one thing to accept the fact that "hey,I'm going to have to kill this person I'm very fond of to survive,so be it", and another to try and confort yourself by saying "this isn't the person I once knew,so it's ok to kill that person" because the latter is a complete lie,the shikis still had memories and emotions so they still were very much the same person.

I don't think it's the same person if the chance of a regular person becoming a murderer is less than one percent and the chance of a shiki becoming one is more than ninety-nine percent (or a hundred percent as far as the villagers knew). That's one heck of an important difference, so it wasn't like the humans were denying reality completely. Having to kill someone whom you know and like is a horrible ordeal and I can't really blame anyone for pretending the shikis were less human than they actually were (and we shouldn't forget that unlike the viewers the average villager never saw the shikis behaving altruistically like Tohru and Ritsuko). Considering they were going to kill them anyway, pretending or not pretending, so all they did was make it a little bit easier for themselves.

Quote:

Except that the humans not only were killing Shikis,they started going after people that were simply bitten (and being bitten once isn't deadly,they could have recovered) or supposed "traitors" when they had no proof and sometimes were just innocent people.

Some of them went over the line, yes. That's sadly pretty much inevitable in such circumstances (panic, mob rule, quite justified suspicion that anybody could be an enemy in disguise) but still it's a far cry from the systematic slaughter that was the shikis' modus operandi for months.

__________________

'The world we live in is always in darkness.'
'Yes, and that is why we seek light.'

If only a small percentage of shiki, vampires, werewolves or whatever supernatural creatures are in a given show bother to fight their nature, why should we blame the humans who fight back and kill them? If you have met ten shiki so far and all of them were killers, would you be inclined to believe the eleventh one when he claims he is actually a nice guy?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Matrim

but still it's a far cry from the systematic slaughter that was the shikis' modus operandi for months.

Just want to point out one of your assumptions here: that none of the shiki except those we were shown opposed the systemic slaughter. That's a pretty dangerous assumption. Unfortunately,

Spoiler for slight manga spoilers:

the anime wasn't as good as the manga (or probably novel) at conveying the internal conflict that some of the other shiki went through.

As far as I could see, Tatsumi was the only one who arguably, to use a phrase of yours, "murdered for pleasure". Again, not so obvious just from the anime, but though most viewers may not agree with what the shiki were doing, there were reasons for that modus operandi.

p.s. let me just try to place myself in the range of opinions here, just in case anyone thinks I'm trying to defend the shiki by saying that "the humans can be monsters too":

I look at each character in accordance with the context surrounding each of their struggles/decisions etc. There are characters on both sides whose actions I can't condone, but I try to understand exactly what brought about those actions.

__________________

You must free yourself from that illusion,
from the illusion that a story must have a beginning and an end.

"No, you are not entitled to your opinion... You are only entitled to what you can argue for.”
- Patrick Stokes

I don't think it's the same person if the chance of a regular person becoming a murderer is less than one percent and the chance of a shiki becoming one is more than ninety-nine percent (or a hundred percent as far as the villagers knew). That's one heck of an important difference.

Except the difference doesn't come from simply turning into a Shiki.

It comes from waking up in an organisation that forces its members to kill by saying "kill or be killed" or "kill that person or we'll kill them ourselves anyway"

And just by Karica67 I'm not trying to defend the actions

I'm just saying the situation was a whole lot more complex than some villagers were making out to be.

In the end to me a war was fought because a few extremists on both sides wanted to fight it and in the process lots of innocent blood on both sides was shed for the interest of those few extremists.

It comes from waking up in an organisation that forces its members to kill by saying "kill or be killed" or "kill that person or we'll kill them ourselves anyway"

Which is once again something the viewers knew but not the villagers. When you learn that someone you know has turned into a bloodsucking murderous monster, jumping to the conclusion that he must be doing it under duress is hardly plausible. And, of course, the shiki could have ran away or tried to warn their families and friends instead of following the path of the least resistance, or ganged up against Tatsumi. No one forced Sunako to kill when she became a shiki, yet kill she did... a lot. Once they got over their initial shock, most shikis seemed to be enjoying the killing, rather than view at as reprehensible but needed for them to survive.

__________________

'The world we live in is always in darkness.'
'Yes, and that is why we seek light.'

Except that the humans not only were killing Shikis,they started going after people that were simply bitten (and being bitten once isn't deadly,they could have recovered) or supposed "traitors" when they had no proof and sometimes were just innocent people.

The humans were also in denial about the shikis still being the same people they were when they were alive.
It's one thing to accept the fact that "hey,I'm going to have to kill this person I'm very fond of to survive,so be it", and another to try and confort yourself by saying "this isn't the person I once knew,so it's ok to kill that person" because the latter is a complete lie,the shikis still had memories and emotions so they still were very much the same person.

Killing people who had been bitten was an invention of the 20.5 OVA. In the manga, Oogawa didn't even think about killing the mind controlled servants who had stabbed him (four times). 20.5 rewrote the intended purpose of that section of the manga, to show how hard it was for the humans to do it as opposed to the callousness of the Shiki. Just look at villager who ran across shiki coming home late from a meeting. His former neighbors turned shiki not only don't even think to help him, they chat with his future killers. The parts it retained from the original, like the villager refusing to kill one shiki because he owed him a lot, when that shiki had unknown to him killed his son, look jarringly out of place.

The manga makes it clear that shiki like Nao who had given into their darker impulses were no longer human and unlike a human criminal, had no chance of redemption. It also showed that Nao's family had been friends with the family of the guy with the hat whose father had been shot. His son had also been killed by a shiki before. Nao either did it or stood by and let it happen. That's why he wanted to destroy her.

Ah, yes, I had forgotten werewolves "rose" faster. Seishin is really the only true winner of this anime. The village he hated so much burnt down, freeing him at last; he became an immortal superhuman; and last but not least, he got himself a cute legal loli. Lucky bastard.

Quote:

Die, Seishin, you spineless, cowardly traitor! Die! And take Sunako with you to hell, will ya?

Ah, that felt nice. I don't know if it was intentional or not but I saw Seishin as the embodiment of pseudo-intellectual who always tries to see the situation through every viewpoint, never takes quick decisions and uses a lot of lofty phrases he doesn't really understand. Which would have been harmless enough, if he weren't playing with people's lives.

Seishin lacked the courage to end his own life or even walk away from his role in the village. At least the manga makes it clear that like Cain, he and Sunako will wander the wastelands in despair, an even more meaningless existence than he had before. That's an ironic similarity to his own father's fate, who thought he could have a new life as a shiki but ended up still paralyzed.

After finishing the series, I'm very confident in saying for me this was the best series about vampires, or I may go as bold to say this was the best one for me in all medium that portrayed vampires. It was a bit slow in the beginning but it paid off with the ending almost spectacular beside the few complaints, it was still an appropriate conclusion. It took its time to build the plot and never rushing anything. Its execution is one of the better I've seen in the anime. It was very moving and poignant in many scenes, it makes me think.

Even in the process of watching it, I was eagerly waiting for that bloody end for shiki. I found a lot of them irritating, overindulgent and disrespectful. Here they just come to small town and do what they please, stomping the rules and regulations of the town. That's why I probably found the ending satisfying if not brutal but most shiki had it coming. The villagers not realising they were slowly being killed by vampires, I thought was natural when they are just small town folks not interested in superstitions.

i have just finished watching this for the first time and really enjoyed it. my biggest surprise was that at the start i disliked the shiki and wanted them to be wiped out but then i ended up feeling a bit sorry for them at the end.